Särtryck nr 2015:9

We study how the quality and instability of institutions and policies affect economic growth in 35 European countries. While stability entails valuable predictability, instability can reflect reforms that offer positive long-run consequences. We construct measures of quality and instability for a panel of countries for 1984–2009. Results suggest that the quality of policy is growth-promoting. Notably, this positive effect becomes larger the more unstable policies are. The findings suggest that for European countries, the benefits of policy flexibility – due to experimentation and learning or making rent seeking more difficult – dominate the costs of reduced predictability.